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Contents

Patterns

Joline's Patterns:

14 Identifiable Neighbourhood

Conflict: People need an identifiable spatial unit to belong to.
Resolution: Help people to define the neighbourhoods they live in, not more than 300 yards across, with no more than 400 or 500 inhabitants. In existing cities, encourage local groups to organise themselves to form such neighbourhoods. Give the neighbourhoods some degree of autonomy as far as taxes and land controls are concerned. Keep major roads outside these neighbourhoods.

15 Neighbourhood Boundary

Conflict
The strength of the boundary is essential to a neighbourhood. If the boundary is too weak the neighbourhood will not be able to maintain its own identifiable character.

Resolution
Encourage the formation of a boundary around each neighbourhood, to separate it from the next door neighbourhoods. Form this boundary by closing down streets and limiting access to the neighbourhood- cut the normal number of streets at least by half. Place gateways at those points where the restricted access paths cross the boundary; and make the boundary zone wide enough to contain meeting places for the common functions shared by several neighbourhoods.

18 Network of Learning

Conflict: In a society which emphasises teaching, children and students- and adults- become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasises ;earning instead of teaching.

Resolution: Instead of the lock-step of compulsory schooling in a fixed place, work in piecemeal ways to decentralise the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people all over the city: workshops, teachers at home, professionals will to take on the young as helpers, older children, museums, youth groups, scholarly seminars, industrial workshops, old people, and so on. Conceive of all these situation as forming the backbone of the learning process; survey all these situations that comprise their "school" paying as they go with standard vouchers, raised by community tax. Build new educational facilities in a way which extends and enriches this network.

24 Sacred Sites

Conflict
People cannot maintain their spiritual roots and their connections to the past if the physical world they live in does not also sustain these roots.

Resolution
Whether the sacred sites are large or small, whether they are at the center of the towns, in neighbourhoods, or in the deepest countryside, establish ordinances which will protect them absolutely- so that our roots in the visible surroundings cannot be violated.

People will not feel comfortable in their houses unless a group of houses forms a cluster, with the public land between them jointly owned by all the householders.
Resolution

Arrange houses to form very rough but identifiable clusters of 8 to 12 households around some common land and paths. Arrange the clusters so that anyone can walk through them, without feeling like a trespasser.

67 Common Land

May be part of Accessible Green (60), House Cluster (37), Row Houses (38), Housing Hill (39), Work Community (41).
Conflict
Without common land no social system can survive.

Resolution
Give over 25 per cent of the land in house clusters to common land which touches, or is very very near, the homes which share it. Basic: be wary of the automobile; on no account let it dominate this land.

31 Promenade

May be part of Mosaic of Subcultures (8), Community of 7000 (12), Activity Nodes (30).
Conflict

Each subculture needs a center for its public life: a place where you can go to see people, and to be seen.
Resolution

Encourage the gradual formation of a promenade at the heart of every community, linking the main activity nodes, and placed centrally, so that each point in the community is with 10 minutes' walk of it. Put main points of attraction at the two ends, to keep a constant movement up and down.

51 Green Streets

May be part of Looped Local Roads (49), Common Land (67).
Conflict

There is too much hot hard asphalt in the world. A local road, which only gives access to buildings, needs a few stones for the wheels of the cars; nothing more. Most of it can still be green.
Resolution

On local roads, closed to through traffic, plant grass all over the road and set occasional paving stones into the grass to form a surface for the wheels of those cars that need access to the street. Make no distinction between street and sidewalk. Where houses open off the street, put in more paving stones or gravel to let cars turn onto their own land.

We came from the water; our bodies are largely water; and water plays a fundamental roles in our psychology. We need constant access to water, all around us; and we can not have it without reverence for water in all its forms. But everywhere in cities water is out of reach.
Resolution

Preserve natural pools and streams and allow them to run through the city; make paths for people to walk along them and footbridges to cross them. Let the streams form natural barriers in the city, with traffic crossing them only infrequently on bridges.
Whenever possible, collect rainwater in open gutters and allow it to flow above ground, along pedestrian paths and in front of houses. In places without natural running water, create fountains in the streets.

163 Outdoor Room

May be part of Common Areas at the Heart (129), Farmhouse Kitchen (139), Sequence of Sitting Spaces (142), Half-hidden Garden (111), Sunny Place (161).
Conflict

A garden is the place for lying in the grass, swinging, croquet, growing flowers, throwing a ball for the dog. But there is another way of being outdoors: and it needs are not met by the garden at all.
Resolution

Build a place outdoors which has so much enclosure round it, that it takes on the feeling of a room, even though it is open to the sky. To do this, define it at the corners with columns, perhaps roof it partially with a trellis or a sliding canvas roof, and create "walls" around it, with fences, sitting walls, screens, hedges, or the exterior walls of the building itself.

170 Fruit Trees

May be part of Common Land (67), Half-hidden Garden (111).
Conflict

In the climates where fruit trees grow, the orchards give the land an almost magical identity: think of the orange groves of Southern California, the cherry trees of Japan, the olive trees of Greece. But the growth of cities seems always to destroy these trees and the quality they possess.
Resolution

Plant small orchards of fruit trees in gardens and on common land along paths and streets, in parks, in neighbourhoods: wherever there are well-established groups that can themselves care for the trees and harvest the fruit.

175 Greenhouse

May be part of House Cluster (37), Work Community (41), Common Land (67).
Conflict

Many efforts are being made to harness solar energy by converting it into hot water or electric power. And yet the easiest way to harness solar energy is the most obvious and oldest: namely, to trap the heat inside a greenhouse and use it for growing flowers and vegetables.
Resolution

In temperate climates, build a greenhouse as part of your house or office, so that it is both a "room" if the house which can be reached directly without going outdoors and a part of the garden which can be reached directly from the garden.

176 Garden Seat

May be part of Garden Growing Wild (172), Sunny Place (161).
Conflict

Somewhere in every garden, there must be at least one spot, a quiet garden seat, in which a person- or two people- can reach into themselves and be in touch with nothing else by nature.
Resolution

Make a quiet place in the garden- a private enclosure with a comfortable seat, thick planting, sun. Pick the place for the seat carefully; pick the place that will give you the most intense kind of solitude.

177 Vegetable Garden

May be part of Fruit Trees (170), Common Land (67), Half-hidden Garden (111).
Conflict

In a health town every family can grow vegetables for itself. the time is past to think of this as a hobby for enthusiasts; it is a fundamental part of human life.
Resolution

Set aside one piece of land either in the private garden or on common land as a vegetable garden. About one-tenth of an acre is needed for each family of four. make sure the vegetable garden is in a sunny place and central to all the households it serves. Fence it in and build a small storage shed for gardening tools beside it.